Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro Makes Up Another Fake Story to Smear Hagel, GOP Runs With It

Breitbrat Ben Shapiro apparently just made up a story about Chuck Hagel receiving donations from a group called “Friends of Hamas,” because as Dave Weigel reports, the group does not actually exist.

As with all these fake stories from the Breitbart crew, it immediately spread throughout the right wing echo chamber, repeated by Mike Huckabee, redstate.com, the National Review, Fox News, etc. — none of whom ever bothered to check on the group’s existence.

Here’s the problem: There’s no proof that “Friends of Hamas” actually exists. At best, it’s an organization so secret that nobody in government has thought to mention its existence. At worst, it’s as fake as Manti Te’o’s girlfriend. The Treasury Department, which designates sponsors of terror, has done so to many charities tied to Hamas. “Friends of Hamas” is not among them. The State Department doesn’t designate it, either. And a bit less holistically, a Lexis search for the group reveals absolutely nothing.

I’ve been unable to find any Senate staffer who knows where the “Friends” rumor came from, and Dave Reaboi, communications director for the (generally conservative) Center for Security Policy, shared my confusion about the alleged group. “Looking back to the 1990s, there were several groups (some affiliated with Holy Land Foundation, some not) that functioned as fund-raisers,” he said in an email. “I wouldn’t put it past these people to refer to it this way in private, but I doubt highly that they’d actually call a legit group ‘Friends of Hamas.’”

[…]

This morning I wrote Shapiro to clear up the accusation. “Have you found any more proof that this group exists?” I asked. “Is it just shorthand for some people who might support Hagel, or a real group?”

“The original story is the entirety of the information I have,” he said.

Charles Stevenson, “a long-time Senate staffer, former professor at the National War College, and author of a standard text on the job of the secretary of defense”:

I despair. I worked on the Senate Armed Services Committee for ten years and have followed it closely ever since. We had big fights - over Vietnam, ending the draft, the B-1 bomber and MX missile - but members always recognized that they needed to compromise in order to pass a defense authorization bill, which the committee has now done for an amazing 51 years in a row.

My bosses sometimes put holds on nominations in order to get more information from the executive branch, and we even threatened filibusters a couple of times. But nobody abused those tactics. Sometimes the committee even voted against a presidential nominee, but still reported the nomination to let the full Senate decide - by simple majority vote. SASC members always put the institution ahead of party or politics.

…

The behavior of some of the new members on the Hagel nomination is way over the line - disgraceful! They show no respect for the institution and are likely to poison its ability to work in a collaborative way. They are also hurting the institution of the office of Secretary of Defense and thus undermining our system of civilian control.

Saying that he had serious doubts about the source of payments that Mr. Hagel had accepted for speaking engagements, Mr. Cruz declared, “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.”

Essentially, “we just can’t be sure whether or not fmr. Senator Hagel is not an agent of a foreign gov’t!”

The original story is the entire fabrication of what is going on with Hagel. Plain and simple, Shapiro simply went and made up the entire thing.

It’s a lie. A huge one at that.

Normally, that kind of lie and journalistic misrepresentation would be grounds for firing, but Breitbart apparently has no problem keeping him on board.

At the same time, none of the others who linked to the report questioned the veracity of his astounding claims. None of these usual suspects are backing away from Shapiro because it doesn’t fit their worldview. They’re hanging on to it despite logic or facts. It’s laziness on their part as well as active malfeasance. They’re purposefully hoping people wont notice that they’re running a completely bogus story and hope that if it’s repeated enough times in enough outlets someone might take it seriously despite the fact that the original report has no actual facts involved and can’t actually produce evidence that the Friends of Hamas group exists.

Put simply, it’s a group that doesn’t exist.

It doesn’t pass the smell test. Everyone knows, or should know Hamas is a terrorist group on the State Department terror list. Who in their right mind would create a “Friends of.. Hamas” group?

Opensecrets.org has no such group and no one with Hamas in the name donated to Hagel.

I don’t know why anyone is surprised. These people hate the government they work for, are not the least bit informed about what their job actually is, and a fair number of them simply have no concept about how the government works because they’ve either not read a civics book or simply don’t give a shit. They are there to enrich themselves and get a gig at some lobby shop or think tank once they’re out of office, collect a government paycheck and benefits while they can and to hell with actual governance.

I don’t know why anyone is surprised. These people hate the government they work for, are not the least bit informed about what their job actually is, and a fair number of them simply have no concept about how the government works because they’ve either not read a civics book or simply don’t give a shit. They are there to enrich themselves and get a gig at some lobby shop or think tank once they’re out of office, collect a government paycheck and benefits while they can and to hell with actual governance.

An excellent summary of the present-day GOP platform. The only thing that may be missing is the underlying mission to further enrich their fat cat backers at everyone else’s expense.

Good gosh almost forgot about this. Something nearly all if not very candidate has always done in releasing their taxes. But no, to withhold that information suddenly became a matter of superduper high integrity that could not even be considered. But for Hagel, obviously, it’s a much different matter. I wonder why….

Good gosh almost forgot about this. Something nearly all if not very candidate has always done in releasing their taxes. But no, to withhold that information suddenly became a matter of superduper high integrity that could not even be considered. But for Hagel, obviously, it’s a much different matter. I wonder why….

At the very least, it seems likely that Romney took advantage of a foreign tax shelter amnesty in 2009, which would have looked ugly politically.

Of course, after the recess, Graham will just claim there’s been a bombshell of some sort:

I’m beginning to wonder if demanding a cloture vote, and holding out until after the recess, is just the GOP trying to “prove” to Obama who’s in charge of the Senate. That the possibility that cloture will not be passed tomorrow has more to do with the GOP’s little fee-fees being hurt over Reid refusing to abide by their holds than any real disagreement with Hagel’s nomination.

A man allied with the “Sovereign Citizen” movement told City Judge Sherry Paty on Wednesday that her court is invalid. Judge Paty told Eric Kiesche that he was free to appeal her decision, and she proceeded to hear the case.

Kiesche, who titles himself Spike and is the founder of the Order of the Constitution Defenders, said City Court is “not a court of record.” He said he had filed an appeal with Criminal Court and had asked for an investigation of the handling of his case.

He said he was denied “rule of law and due process.”

“This is a Bill of Rights violation like I’ve never seen,” he told the judge. At one point, he asked her, “Is this a commercial court or a court of justice? I know the answer.”

He said, “What you have basically done is railroad me.”

Judge Paty found Kiesche, who was the speaker for a meeting of the Catoosa County Tea Party in 2011, guilty on all counts.

He was fined $50 and ordered to pay court costs on charges of not having a driver’s license or proof of insurance and $25 and court costs on a light law violation.

That’s about 5% of what he would have paid for those offenses in Texas WITHOUT being a jackass to the arresting officer and again in court.

Well, for all I know Romney’s taxes and investments and whatnot were completely legit. It’s just that there’s a much different standard now for Hagel.

IMO, it is more likely than not that Romney’s taxes were all legal. However, they would also have been politically damaging —- it simply would not do for the rubes to see how well the Romneys of the world can legally reduce their tax rates.

Only reason that he’s even back in the US Senate is because of Bob Torricelli, who quit the race after improprieties came up and despite the fact that it was past the deadline to get someone else on the ballot, the NJ Supreme Court found that Lautenberg’s name could be proffered.

It stank to hell and back and it will be good to get some fresh blood into the Senate from NJ. Can’t particularly stand Bob Menendez either. Neither has done a particularly good job pushing for NJ interests and while Lautenberg claims that he’s a big mass transit supporter, the only thing he has to show for it is the Secaucus boondoggle named after him. Someone who can make sure NJ interests are represented in the Senate and who is on top of things would be a bonus. Booker definitely has the social media aspect covered - and that he’s got a good working relationship with Christie doesn’t hurt (unlike the horrific relationship between Christie and both Lautenberg and Menendez).

Wait a sec. He’s arming jihadists? Is that before or after folks on the right demand that he arms the rebels in Syria. Or are we only going to focus on the fighter jet sales to Egypt - the same sales that GOPers are attacking because of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi are now heading the regime, but which they don’t want to completely sabotage the sales since it would hurt the districts where the planes are built (and the jobs that go along with them).

Wait a sec. He’s arming jihadists? Is that before or after folks on the right demand that he arms the rebels in Syria. Or are we only going to focus on the fighter jet sales to Egypt - the same sales that GOPers are attacking because of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi are now heading the regime, but which they don’t want to completely sabotage the sales since it would hurt the districts where the planes are built (and the jobs that go along with them).

It’s not a secret how Shapiro has found it profitable to just make up stories and sell them to the gullible.

For example, yesterday I linked to a story about the “Sasquatch DNA” “paper” that a supposed “journal” published. It’s quackery, but there are Americans out there buying it up as if it’s real.

Every generation has their version of these scam artists. Some have made it a form of entertainment (such as Art Bell did in the previous generation), others just rake in the dough and never break kayfabe.

It is sad we have national level politicians who jump on these bandwagons.

“It is a time, in my opinion, and I have been in the minority on this point, to engage. I have never believed that engagement or diplomacy is appeasement. Part of a great power’s responsibility is to use all the instruments of power. To use them wisely. The military is one instrument of power but their are other instruments of power.”

Also maybe they’ll complain about “cultural relativism” or something as he started with a bit about no one religion having a monopoly on loving their children, etc and our commonalities can bridge divides.

When you talk to your more emphatic gun advocates about the proposition of regulating guns, a similar refrain always arises: we have guns to protect ourselves against tyrannical government. Guns, you see, have the ancillary benefits of being awesome for home defense and hunting (unless you shoot the wrong person or whatever, but that only happens once every vice-presidential hunting trip). But the overarching reason the drafters of the Constitution put the Second Amendment in place was so that you could ultimately shoot those drafters.

If need be.

I don’t want to litigate the meaning of the Second Amendment, and for the purposes of this post, I’ll accept that the above is, in fact, the purpose of the Second Amendment. In fact, I’ll even lay out the principles of the argument:

1) The Second Amendment is a constitutional guarantee against tyrannical government overreach.
2) The Second Amendment justifies armed, violent rebellion against the government when the government intrudes on the rights of its citizens.
3) Those who engage in that armed, violent rebellion will be justified by their opposition to the previously mentioned tyrannical overreach.

Let’s assume all of that’s true. The question, then, isn’t whether we should regulate guns…the question is how, when you start shooting, we determine whether you’re a constitutionally justified patriot or Chris Dorner.

This is a low quality dog whistle —- the mau mau uprising is obscure, and most who know of it are either ‘race realists’ or are familiar with white supremacist propaganda.

The point was to imply that Obama would somehow like to see blacks massacreeing whites in America, remember Rush and his “open season on whites” routine a few years back? They are preying on these dark, xenophobic fears, and it is truly ugly.

Let’s assume all of that’s true. The question, then, isn’t whether we should regulate guns…the question is how, when you start shooting, we determine whether you’re a constitutionally justified patriot or Chris Dorner.

Let’s also assume that the government has been elected freely and fairly. Let us assume that it reflects the will of the majority of the people who participated in those free and fair elections.

Let us assume that anyone who calls the government tyrants or usurpers without a sound and justifiable reason is a seditious terrorist out to overthrow the government.

And I believe the government is empowered by law and the Constitution to deal with such people.

The point was to imply that Obama would somehow like to see blacks massacreeing whites in America, remember Rush and his “open season on whites” routine a few years back? They are preying on these dark, xenophobic fears, and it is truly ugly.

I agree on the purpose of the exercise, and on its essential ugliness. However, few in the US will make the connection between Kenya and the mau mau uprising without being explicitly told about it, making it a bit lower quality as a dog whistle than old favorites such as ‘urban crime’ etc.

I agree on the purpose of the exercise, and on its essential ugliness. However, few in the US will make the connection between Kenya and the mau mau uprising without being explicitly told about it, making it a bit lower quality as a dog whistle than old favorites such as ‘urban crime’ etc.

Kenya, Africa, Ruwanda, Somalia…they are able to fill in the blanks quite well based even on their Fox-based information level.

He rode a blazing saddle
He wore a shining star
His job to offer battle
To bad men near and far
He conquered fear
And he conquered hate
He turned our night into day
He made his blazing saddle
A torch to light our way

But really, the sentiment expressed here is what’s driving the argument against an increase in minimum wage than any concern over job lossess. Those folks right now think they’re highly paid because they earn $9/hr or less afraid that raising the minimum wage means they’re back at the bottom of the ladder, knowing there’s no way their bosses will raise their own pay to compensate.

But really, the sentiment expressed here is what’s driving the argument against an increase in minimum wage than any concern over job lossess. Those folks right now think they’re highly paid because they earn $9/hr or less afraid that raising the minimum wage means they’re back at the bottom of the ladder, knowing there’s no way their bosses will raise their own pay to compensate.

You mean the old stratgem of playing the poor whites off against the blacks?

Minimum wage isn’t so bade for these deadbeats when they get free healthcare and foodstamps While we the working middle class struggle with these super high tax rates killing the profits of the companies I own.
#TGDN
— Conservative USA (@steve0423)

You mean the old stratgem of playing the poor whites off against the blacks?

Pretty much. Politicians and big business working together to convince the rubes that their piddly-ass wages are at stake. Gotta keep alive the myth that one rises in this country based upon their merits, rather than who they know.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, and assuming he’s not simply lying about this, if it did happen that way it means there are Republicans who use Breitbart.com to deliberately spread false smear stories, because they know they can rely on hacks like Shapiro to uncritically repeat them.

He argues in favor of immigration reform. There’s a couple sentences at ~19:30 on the Peace Process, but they seem unobjectionable. He says near the end (~26:50) that the U.S. objected to Olmert wanting to begin some form of engagement w/ Assad’s gov’t, and wonders why we chose to do that. I think that’s about it for what they might latch on to.

Somehow I’m waiting for the ultimate insult to come when the company tries to charge passengers for damage to the ship. It seems like standard practice these days in the art of screwing over the unwashed masses.

Speaking of YouTube, last night I watched an old BBC documentary from 2003 about neo-Nazis (Tom Metzger), skinheads, etc. I was struck by how much of their whiny “patriotic” rhetoric is identical to what we’ve been hearing from the RWNJs over the past few years. It’s really, really creepy how mainstream such a disgusting ideology has become.

The only slightly bright spot was an article about how the little girls who made up the Prussian Blue white power duo, who are now 20 years old, have (mostly) abandoned their mother’s twisted worldview (they’re still not 100% convinced that the Holocaust was real *sigh*).

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) chose a different reason to oppose the proposal today. A stronger minimum wage, Blackburn said, would negatively affect the ability of young workers to enter the workforce as teenagers, and would prevent them from learning responsibility like she did when she was a teenage retail employee making a seemingly-measly $2.15 an hour in Mississippi:
BLACKBURN: What we’re hearing from moms and from school teachers is that there needs to be a lower entry level, so that you can get 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the process. Chuck, I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store, down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. And I appreciated that opportunity.

Making $2.15 an hour certainly does sound worse than today’s minimum wage, which federal law mandates must be at least $7.25 an hour. But what Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, and assuming he’s not simply lying about this, if it did happen that way it means there are Republicans who use Breitbart.com to deliberately spread false smear stories, because they know they can rely on hacks like Shapiro to uncritically repeat them.

So either Shapiro is a liar, or he’s too stupid/lazy to corroborate his sources.

Pfft. We have already established that the unions are to blame for the minimum wage not being enough to live on.

Get rid of the unions and voila! Living wage.

//////////

The minimum wage/union train is always on time. Remember Rush bellowing about the minimum wage back when Democrats wanted it raised to $7.25, declaring it a play by the unions to raise their own pay due to union contracts.

Somehow I’m waiting for the ultimate insult to come when the company tries to charge passengers for damage to the ship. It seems like standard practice these days in the art of screwing over the unwashed masses.

Now that would be the ultimate in adding insult to injury. I can’t imagine Carnival would be that stupid.

They forgot Canada, the Netherlands, er all of Europe actually. Hell if socialized medicine makes you a liberal, then they’re talking about getting rid of the entire world, with the exception of the American south and Orange County.

Somehow I’m waiting for the ultimate insult to come when the company tries to charge passengers for damage to the ship. It seems like standard practice these days in the art of screwing over the unwashed masses.

They are getting their money back, another free trip, and $500. What do they have to complain about?
//

Imagine a law with no controls on air, water or food quality, just for starters…that is enough, because after three breaths of toxic air, a sip of contaminated water and a bite of e.coli tainted cheeseburger, you will be too busy coughing, puking and having the runs to consider anything else…

Seconded. Can you imagine a world of endless rows of cookie cutter people who all think & behave the same? There would be no new ideas/inventions, no unique art, no surprises, no “salt”.

I can’t remember the exact quote or person, but there was a Japanese guy—someone involved in the creative field, maybe an artist—who said his worst nightmare was a never-ending field of gorgeous, blooming cherry trees. So true.

Reminds me of the BP CEO racing his yacht or some shit while crude spewed in the Gulf. Not like they can actually do anything about the current situation they’re in….but as with many rich folks, they’re just absolutely clueless or don’t give a shit what the rubes think of them. Optics don’t matter when you’re obscenely wealthy.

Well, just a few minutes until the Senate’s supposed to have its cloture vote. Prediction: GOP will filibuster, whine that Reid’s “rushing” this vote despite their already declaring they’d vote for cloture after the recess.

A similar situation is happening out on Long Island. The Town Supervisor for Brookhaven was on vacation when the blizzard hit, and there are parts of town that are still being plowed out. It’s a total debacle on how the town handled the mess, but there are folks calling for his head.

There’s something to it when his underlings couldn’t get the job done and the plan to deal with the storm were wholly inadequate and couldn’t cope.

But to complain about Carnival Cruise’s CEO to be canned for going to a basketball game when a cruise ship has a shipwide poop deck? He should be canned for the failure to prepare for potential power loss (an all too frequent occurrence on cruise ships - and one that happens alongside fires no less), and that the ships he’s operating can’t handle basic sanitary conditions on backup power.

Reminds me of the BP CEO racing his yacht or some shit while crude spewed in the Gulf. Not like they can actually do anything about the current situation they’re in….but as with many rich folks, they’re just absolutely clueless or don’t give a shit what the rubes think of them. Optics don’t matter when you’re obscenely wealthy.

A similar situation is happening out on Long Island. The Town Supervisor for Brookhaven was on vacation when the blizzard hit, and there are parts of town that are still being plowed out. It’s a total debacle on how the town handled the mess, but there are folks calling for his head.

There’s something to it when his underlings couldn’t get the job done and the plan to deal with the storm were wholly inadequate and couldn’t cope.

But to complain about Carnival Cruise’s CEO to be canned for going to a basketball game when a cruise ship has a shipwide poop deck? He should be canned for the failure to prepare for potential power loss (an all too frequent occurrence on cruise ships - and one that happens alongside fires no less), and that the ships he’s sailing can’t handle basic sanitary conditions on backup power.

The CEO probably contributed to this problem one way or another (e.g., the above identified process issues). So, when disaster strikes, the least he can do is assume the fetal position and stay away from the media.

Yes, I know folks who didn’t get their street plowed until Monday of all things. That and their new “we’re just going to start by plowing 1 lane down the middle” masterplan. Apparently people bitched about having snow-burm barricades in front of their driveways, so instead they just plowed single-lanes down the middle on the first day. Which created havoc for little cars trying to pass each other trying to climb 30” of a snow/ice.

What’s more, the notion that one could quit work in order to receive unemployment benefits is nonsensical — In order to be eligible for unemployment insurance (UI), the Labor Department makes clear, you must be “unemployed through no fault of your own (determined under State law).” And importantly, as CBO explained, “To maintain eligibility for benefits while unemployed, UI recipients must search for a new job and, in some states, must accept a reasonable job offer.”

Despite the facts, conservative media have a history of denying the realities of unemployment benefits.

Taking advantage of the delay in the vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate, the spinmeisters of the anti-Hagel propaganda machine have a new charge to hurl at the former Nebraska Senator. Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com claims that “Senate sources” have told him that Hagel secretly accepted a campaign contribution from “Friends of Hamas.” The allegation has been picked up and promulgated by numerous right-wing websites and blogs, including Algemeiner and the Sheldon Adelson-owned news daily, Israel HaYom (Israel Today).

Putting aside the common sense realization that no real “friends of Hamas” would be dumb enough to actually form an organization in the US or anywhere else, with a bank account that writes checks to political candidates on behalf of an internationally recognized terrorist organization, we have to ask when and where we have heard that phrase ‘Friends of Hamas’ before”?

Looks like we’re only one Republican Senator away from breaking the filibuster and letting the Hagel confirmation vote take place. My guess is John McCain will be the deciding vote (for whatever reason people still see that addled old fucker as somehow relevant).

But to complain about Carnival Cruise’s CEO to be canned for going to a basketball game when a cruise ship has a shipwide poop deck? He should be canned for the failure to prepare for potential power loss (an all too frequent occurrence on cruise ships - and one that happens alongside fires no less), and that the ships he’s operating can’t handle basic sanitary conditions on backup power.

Micky Arison, (CEO and Chairman of the Board of Carnival) and his father started Carnival Cruise Lines.

He’s also probably the majority stockholder in the corporation, so he isn’t going anywhere from Carnival except by choice. FWIW, he lives on a yacht. In the Miami-Dade community, Mickey is generally considered to be a nice guy, as opposed to some of the other billionaires who live in the South Florida area.

I have no love for cruise lines, being fully aware of how the parent companies operate them. I also tell anyone who is considering taking a cruise that if any emergencies (fire, loss of electrical power, sinking, etc) occur while on board, the first thing which typically happens is that the crew will forget how to speak English.